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Friday, 14 August 2015

Relationship between linguistics and classroom teaching

The linguist and the teacher

It
would not probably be untrue to say there was never a moment in the formal
teaching of language when linguistics has not had a say in deciding the
language content. Decisions about words and structures were always taken, and
fluctuation has always been there in deciding the language mode through which
language needed to be introduced. The teacher had always taken decisions for
the absentee or non-existent linguist. Non-teachers like Erasmus, Marcel,
Prendengast, Sweet certainly there were. But teachers like Quintilian,
Palsgrave, Hoole, Hamilton, Ollendroff, Gouin, Pestalozzi, Palmer were the ones
who provided principles of language teaching. While West was wedded to reforms
on practical concerns, Vietor, Passy, Jesperson were
teacher-turned-phoneticians. However, like in the 18th century when
teachers in general used only existing form language study in spite of
increasing interest in historical and comparative studies of languages,
language teaching theorists except Palmer at the turn of the century hardly
revealed any distinct awareness of the need to use linguistics in its new
formal shape. (As though reciprocally!) neither did the theoretical linguists
concern themselves with issues in language teaching, say the question of
vocabulary control.

But
with the arrival of Bloomfield and his Language,
everything changed. Both were to have tremendous influence on linguists and
language teaching. Bloomfield was critical of conventional language teaching.
Linguists became more interested in his concepts and began to refine and use
them for more rigorous descriptions of languages. Linguistics had come of age
and had become a discipline in its own right. Fries and his colleagues rejected
approaches like the Direct Method and, applying structural linguistics, showed
how the sound system, the structures and the most useful lexical material could
be derived from available linguistic knowledge and organised for language
teaching purposes. and with them
the linguist had arrived in the language teaching, and the teacher had to
follow him. The applied linguist began to tell the teacher what to teach and
how to teach. The teacher was supposed to remember constantly the most
compelling commandment: Teach the language, not about the language.

A
sudden transformation had come about. The teacher without a grounding in
linguistics would not be considered knowledgeable, let alone be permitted to
contribute to language teaching. The arrival of transformational generative
grammar did not help though questions began to be raised about the role of
linguistics in language teaching. Now the teacher had to know about deep
structure, too. He had to make sure learning took place through problem-solving
tasks.

This
was not the end of the story. Hymes questioned Chomsky’s linguistic competence
and introduced communicative competence. Newer concepts and practices for the
benefit of the teacher of course have emerged in the garb of communicative
language teaching. And since about 1970 linguistics has begun the study of
language beyond the sentence through discourse analysis. And in between these
developments, English for Specific Purposes with its language variations,
registers, discourse is another thing the teacher has to contend with. And he
has to comprehend creative construction hypothesis as a counter claim to
interference hypothesis of contrastive linguistics. And for the teacher of
literature, stylistics has changed the colours of critical appreciation by
introducing and emphasising the linguistic aspects of a literary piece.

Curriculum,
syllabus, materials writing have become sophisticated and are supposed to
reflect in their objectives, language content, texts and techniques, of course
for the benefit of the teacher, a given theory and its realisation in pedagogical
terms. Teacher trainers are also expected to introduce the teacher to all new,
ever-growing innovations, classroom techniques geared to successful teaching:
motivate, draw and retain attention through presentation, arouse the learner
through thinking exercises, consolidate, revise, remediate. A variety of drills
for pattern practice has become central to classroom techniques. Language
teaching also reflects the theoretical concepts that have formed the base for
the edifice of language teaching. And the teacher is supposed not only to know
how to write test items in conformity with the underlying concepts but to be
able to evaluate objectively learner performance, achievement, proficiency.

Now
the question is whether or not linguistics is behind the teacher, whether or
not linguistics has a place in the classroom, whether or not a knowledge of
linguistics is useful to the (classroom) teacher who teaches mechanically might
not need a knowledge of linguistics to perform for he is likely to follow the
text and the syllabus blindly, and his failure would be that of the writers of
materials, syllabus and curriculum. And technically he might not be wrong.
However, as no curriculum, no syllabus, no text can bring to classroom a theory
in its fullness, in its richness, as none of them can minimise the inherent
weaknesses, the teacher becomes responsible.

About Me

I hail from Thamizh Nadu, a Southern state of India. I speak Thamizh, Thelugu, English and Hindi.

I served for 43 years as a teacher of English in schools and colleges in India, Ethiopia and Nigeria. I've published several articles on ELT and of general interest in the USA, Ethiopia and India. I've presented several papers in national and international conferences. I've written several course books for the English syllabuses of Bachelor of Engineering of Madras University, Anna University and JNTU, Hyderabad, for public consumption as well.